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Sour grapes gloom and doom from Michelle Obama on Trump?

Who's the real racist?

Who's the real racist?

Michelle Obama recently sat down with Oprah Winfrey for an interview that was previewed on “CBS This Morning” Friday in which she said following the election of President-elect Donald Trump, Americans now know what "not having hope feels like."
The show aired a clip of the sit-down that included a portion where the First Lady discusses the Presidential election.
Winfrey asks Obama, “Your husband’s administration… was all about hope. Do you think that this administration achieved that?”
Obama responded by commenting on the most recent election.
“Yes, I do. Because we feel the difference now,” she says. “See now we are feeling what not having hope feels like, you know. Hope is necessary. It is a necessary concept.”
She said her husband believed in that concept wholeheartedly.
Obama added, “What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”

White House, Clinton Tied To PR Firm Behind Electoral College Fight

The public relations firm working behind the scenes with the faithless electors is rife with ties to prominent Democrats like President Obama and twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Megaphone Strategies, whose stated mission is to “use PR as a tool to diversify progressive movements,” typically works with progressive causes like Black Lives Matter. The firm is representing the handful of “faithless electors” trying to keep President-elect Donald Trump from winning the Electoral College vote.

The firm was co-founded by Van Jones, the former green jobs czar in the Obama White House who later resigned after it was revealed he signed a statement questioning whether the Bush administration had a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Jones now works as a CNN commentator.

Electoral College prepares to meet under old rules, new controversy

The members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday to decide the 45^th president of the United States and, for the second time in less than 20 years, they will do so amid a controversy over the results of November’s general election.
While President-elect Donald Trump picked up 306 electoral votes on Election Day – well over the 270 needed to clinch the election – Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular has risen to 2.8 million over Trump as the last remaining postal votes are counted.
This disparity – along with claims by so-called “faithless electors” that they won’t vote for Trump – has made an already confusing electoral process even more convoluted.
To help readers understand the process and what’s at stake, FoxNews.com has prepared a cheat sheet about the Electoral College.
The Electoral College

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The Electoral College meets every december, but it doesn't have a football team. (Associated Press)

• Who are the members of the Electoral College: There are 538 electors – representing the nation's 435 Representatives, 100 Senators and three non-voting representatives from Washington D.C. Electors cannot be federal officials and are usually chosen by the winning candidate’s political party among the party faithful. All states, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, have chosen electors on a "winner-take-all" basis since the 1880s, but there is no federal law requiring the electors to vote for the candidate who won their state.
• What does the Electoral College Process look like: The process begins after November’s general election, when state governors prepare a “Certificate of Ascertainment” that lists all of the presidential candidates, their respective electors, who won the state and which electors will represent the state at the meeting of the electors in December. At the meeting, the electors cast their votes for president and vice president on separate ballots, with the votes recorded on a Certificate of Vote. The state’s Certificates of Vote is then sent to Congress – as well as the National Archives –where votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
• Why does the U.S. have an Electoral College: The Electoral College was basically started as a compromise by the drafters of the Constitution as some wanted Congress to choose the president, while others wanted direct election by the people. The beneficiaries of the Electoral College in the nascent days of the United States were the southern slave states which were concerned that the country’s more populous industrial centers would dominate less populous rural regions.
• Where does the Electoral College meet: There is no Electoral College campus. There are no dorm rooms that house the electors or frat parties for them to go to on weekends. Instead electors meet in their respective state capitals to cast their votes for president and vice president.
• When does the Electoral College meet: Electors always meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. While the procedures vary slightly state by state, the basic process: reading of Certificate of Ascertainment, attendance, choosing a chairman, choosing tellers, voting, collecting and sorting the votes before placing them in special mahogany boxes to be sent to Congress.

The Faithless Elector

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In this Dec. 9, 2016, photo, President-elect Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally, in Grand Rapids, Mich. In claiming that he scored “a massive landslide victory” in last month’s presidential election, Trump turned history upside down. In fact, his winning margin in the Electoral College is on the other end of the historical spectrum, far closer to the narrowest win in history than to the widest. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

While the Electoral College vote is normally just a procedural step that gets overshadowed by the President-elect’s cabinet choices (the exception being 2000, with George W. Bush, Al Gore and the Florida recount), this year with Clinton winning the popular vote and the divisiveness of the election, there have been a number of electors who have said they might not cast their vote for the candidate who won their state.
Adding to the concerns of these faithless electors are assertions by the Obama administration that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the hacking of Democratic officials' email accounts in the run-up to the presidential election to help Trump's campaign.
When news broke late last week of the CIA's conclusion that Russia likely sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump, Pell and nine other electors — all but one of them Democrats — quickly crafted and published an unprecedented letter to U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper demanding a briefing.

More on this...

• Anti-Trumpers trying to sow chaos in Electoral College

• White House, Clinton Tied To PR Firm Behind Electoral College Push

• Hysterical Liberals Call for End of Electoral College

Their letter, now with dozens of signatures, described the Electoral College as a deliberative body whose members have more than an "empty or formalistic task" to summarily cast their votes.
Despite Harvard professor – and former Democratic presidential candidate - Larry Lessig's claims earlier this week that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, a survey of electors taken by The Associated Press appears to suggest that there’s very little likelihood of derailing Trump's presidency in the Electoral College.
Only 19 of the 44 times the Electoral College has met have there been any faithless electors – and most of those involved only one elector. The most faithless electors ever came in 1832 when 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren and two National Republican Party electors from the state of Maryland refused to vote for presidential candidate Henry Clay and instead abstained.
Despite the loss of 30 votes, Martin Van Buren was elected as the vice president and Andrew Jackson president after receiving over 75 percent of the electoral votes.

No record of 'faithless elector' Chris Suprun as a 9/11 first responder

9/11 Record Of Republican ‘Faithless Elector’ Called Into Question

DALLAS – The Republican elector who has gotten national attention for refusing to vote for Donald Trump at the Electoral College on Dec. 19 was apparently not a first responder on September 11, 2001 as he has stated for years and has a questionable career history, according to an investigation by WFAA.
Chris Suprun, 42, portrays himself as a heroic firefighter who was among the first on the scene after the third plane flew into the Pentagon on 9/11.
In a heavily-publicized editorial this month for the New York Times, Suprun stated that as a member of the Electoral College he will not cast his ballot for Trump because the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for the office.”
The Republican “faithless elector,” who made headlines across the country when he wrote a blistering op-ed pledging not to vote for President-elect Trump in the Electoral College, is now under scrutiny himself after his claim to have been a firefighter on 9/11 has been questioned by a local news outlet.
Christopher Suprun, a Republican elector in Texas, wrote a piece for the New York Times on Dec. 5 called “Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.” In it, Suprun cites his past as a firefighter on 9/11 as one of the reasons for not voting for Donald Trump on Dec. 19, despite Texas voting comfortably for Trump on Nov. 8.
“Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation. That attack and this year’s election may seem unrelated, but for me the relationship becomes clearer every day,” Suprun wrote.
In the piece, he calls on fellow Republican electors to vote their conscience and deny Trump the 270 votes he needs to win the White House, and to back a Republican alternative such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has publicly distanced himself from such efforts.
“The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience,” Suprun wrote. “I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.”
Yet, as the move to deny Trump the 270 votes has gained momentum and media coverage, Suprun’s past has come under scrutiny.
Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA reported that Suprun’s LinkedIn page claims that he was part of Manassas Fire Department in Sept. 2001, but found that he was not part of that Fire Dept. until October, and cited an anonymous first responder who knew Suprun, who contradicted his claims.
“He claimed to be a first responder with the Manassas Park Fire Department on September 11, 2001 and personally told us stories ‘I was fighting fire that day at the Pentagon.’ No, I was on a medic unit that day at the Pentagon and you make a phone call to Manassas Park and you find out that he wasn’t even employed there until October 2001,” the source told the outlet.
Even if Suprun had been hired by Manassas Park before 9/11, the fire chief there told WFAA that they did not respond to the Pentagon that fateful day.
“It’s no different than stolen valor for the military,” the source told WFAA.
Suprun responded to the allegations in a statement Friday:
“You’re right, I wasn’t in New York on 9-11,” he said [although WFAA did not make such a claim.] “I was a part of the response to the Pentagon attacks, as a member of the Dale City fire department in northern Virginia.”
He explained further in response to a question at an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit.
“That story exhibits a reckless disregard for the truth. I never claimed to be a first responder on 9-11 with the Manassas Park Fire Dept. I was a volunteer firefighter at the time for the Dale City Fire Dept. when I responded to the attacks at the Pentagon,” he said.
Suprun’s claim is backed up in part by a story in Philly.com in 2012, which reported on a talk Suprun gave for the Never Forget foundation. In that, Philly.com reports him claiming in that talk that he was indeed part of the Dale City Volunteer Fire Department.
However, that account does not present him as a firefighter, as he claims to be in his Times op-ed and his Reddit answer, but as a volunteer paramedic. His account does not have him fighting fires, but administering first aid in a nearby parking lot, before being deployed to a recreation center, where he treated first responders.
Calls to Dale City Fire Dept. from FoxNews.com were not immediately returned. Follow up questions to Suprun’s agent seeking to clarify his role that day were also not returned.
It was not the only question WFAA raised in regards to Suprun’s record.
On his LinkedIn profile, Suprun says he is presently a paramedic with Freedom EMS in Dallas, but WFAA reports that no such company exists. A spokeswoman for Air Methods ambulance service, where Suprun’s LinkedIn also claims he works, told the outlet he is not employed there either.
Electors make their decision on Dec. 19. Suprun is so far the only elector to publicly express his intent to change his vote from Trump. It would take 37 votes to deny Trump the votes needed, which would then send the question to the House of Representatives.
Trump would likely still win among the Republican-heavy legislature, but rogue electors hope that by presenting a moderate Republican, they can convince them to snatch the White House away from the billionaire.